ACPS Regular School Board Meeting - 2.10.2022

001[Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] all of the the difficulties that we've we've faced over the last couple of years we do have lots to be proud of here in amherst county and tonight we have several recognitions we would like to make and uh i would like to start first with um miss minter if you'll come join me so each year the lynchburg living magazine uh honors 10 of the top k-12 teachers in the region and this year we had two recipients of the the top 10 awards congratulations miss erin minter who's with me tonight she's a kindergarten teacher at central elementary school we also had miss jessica reichert who is a third grade teacher at elon elementary unfortunately she was unable to to attend miss

002minter and ms riker were among 10 teachers selected from school divisions throughout central virginia both aaron and jessica serve as mentors in amherst county public schools dedicating their time to preparing our future generations of educators to effectively serve our students we're so grateful to have these two teachers along with all of our amazing teachers and making a positive impact on the lives of every child every day in amherst county public schools we are thankful they are part of our amherst county public school family so congratulations [Applause] that's awesome okay the second recognition that i'm going to and and i believe ms record is going to join us in march so we can do this with her as well uh the this week is national counseling week each year we recognize the efforts of our school

003counselors and during this week we want people to understand the role that counselors play and we want to advocate for them to for all of us to make that role in our schools a priority you know in the best of times school counselors have been charged with providing for the social emotional support of our students and in some cases our staff they have been asked to help students make connections between their academics and a career that oftentimes seems a million miles away for our young people they've been asked to manage the waves of testing that schools have been required to give our students many of them have even been asked to play a vital role in the scheduling of our students for their courses the following year and they have done all of these things

004in the middle of the most difficult year of public education in quite some time i can think of few people in education who have the varied responsibility that counselors have i want to thank each of them for providing their very best in each of those responsibilities and know that the children of amherst county are in a better place because of their dedication uh skill and child-centered beliefs that each of them possess so thank you to all of our counselors as well [Applause] okay the third recognition is for the real world design challenge winners mr cargill i know you have a couple of uh young people with you so would you like for them to come up now yes okay good evening hope everyone's doing well it's kind of feels weird being on this side of

005the camera so if i mess up let me know good evening school board members school administration and guests my name is mike cargill and i'm the advisor for the amherst lancers tech club this year we are so proud of our teams of achs students who competed in the 2021-22 real world design challenge and guess what we have some exciting news to share with you but what is the real world challenge here it is the real world design challenge is basically an annual competition that gives high school students grades 9 through 12 an opportunity to work in real world engineering challenge and in a team environment two critical components there each year students teams are asked to address a challenge that confront our nation's leading industries uh students who utilize professional engineering uh software to develop

006uh their solutions and also generate presentations that um conventionally demonstrate the value of these solutions the rwdc provides students with opportunities to apply the lessons of the classroom in a to the technical problems that are being faced in the workplace the rwdc allows students to build life-ready skills which is so important the rwc where uh first started and night we started with it in 2018 that time we had seven students which is the max on any team who participated the slide that you see is the f-51 x-9 designed for the competition that year that team took fourth place then in 2019 our team constructed a hectocopter which uses six motors and is designed to move packages from one location to another that year we placed fourth out of 14 teams our third year we ended

007up skipping because of um we skipped the competition because of covid and this year we had two teams first time ever the alt alpha thunderbirds and the altc beta valkyrie let me introduce to you their team leader of the amherst lancers tech club real world design challenge senior gracie stinson who has some exciting news to share gracie thank you mr cargill and so this year for the real world design challenge team it was a returning year but this was also definitely a rebuilding year in the past we've submitted things but this year because i was the only remaining veteran member i had to find new people to be on our team this is why i went into the advanced science classes and also the ap us history class to gauge the student interest to specifically

008provide equality to all grade levels if they wanted to participate this year's challenge was specifically a delivery drone challenge and we had to carry an 11 pound package which is much larger than anyone else is doing right now at least 11 miles there and back every year like mr cargill said they give us challenges that the industry has not yet sold themselves the whole goal of this is to advance stem opportunities in schools and we wanted to provide equality in the way that we had our teams we wanted to build teams but since we had so many people that were interested we had two teams and therefore there was a vetting process to decide who would be on the alpha team and who will be on the beta team these were the two students that

009were actually on the alpha team and let me introduce them to you i was one of the physicists and i was also the team leader this year ben mcguire was the our general scientist nathan neblett was our business analyst connor miller did all of our cad work lily ryder was our researcher and writer and jeremiah burford he was our main editor riley polith was our researcher and analyst so this is the design that we submitted this is a hybrid drone design so it actually has a fixed winged but it has a push tail propeller on the back for vertical flight and then it also has a railing system that allows for hovering capabilities that's specifically for on waiting to see if it can land or drop off for delivery locations as you can see on

010the side view there's an antenna sticking up from the back that is extremely important because that is how all of our drones motors are actually powered because our drone is so big it is about nine feet by nine feet that's still within our guidelines that we were allowed to have it's actually the largest that we were allowed to have but that was because it had to carry such a large payload because of this we decided to use power towers to actually supply the energy to our drones how this works is there is actually a tesla coil inside of a tower that's along the airfield and that transmits electricity in the form of lightning to the receiving antenna on the drone this works because it specifically goes on a very specific frequency that works similar to

011the way that your cell phone receives signal that way this had to be done because any sort of battery that had enough wattage to actually power it would completely weigh the drone down and this has actually been proposed in different military plans before but it hasn't been put into place yet with this design the alpha team i am very pleased to announce took first place in the governor first place in the governor's challenge this year as we are moving forward to the national challenge we will be on april 1st we will revise and we will resubmit our engineering design notebook based on the judge's comments and then on the 28th we will be giving a virtual presentation that's about 15 minutes long and we will have a 10-minute question answer section with a panel of

012judges of their field i want to say a special thank you to everyone at central office and the school board for allowing these kinds of opportunities in our schools and after school opportunities like this because we had to do so much outside of class and there was a lot of work into this um i would also like to thank mr cargill for all of his support and the tech club for funding this entire project and also professor guian who was our mentor um she's from liberty university and she was there to answer all of our questions about anything to do with unmanned aerial systems and that was a major help and one of the reasons why we were such a huge success this year and also mr collins from the high school he was the

013physics teacher and he helped me figure out a lot of how the motors worked and everything additionally i and most importantly last but not least i would love to thank my mother for all the support that she's given me and also for sponsoring both teams this year are there any questions stuff thank you that's awesome so um we've talked a lot about developing life-ready students we've talked a lot about the problems that this world faces i feel really good about what we're sending out there we are sending out certainly life-ready students that are beside me tonight gracie and jeremiah so very proud of you guys and so i would like to present to you the 2021-2022 real world design challenge state champion governors award congratulations uh and last but not least the virginia school board

014association uh dedicates this month to school board appreciation month uh you have at your place a lot of things uh our schools have uh provided some some gifts to you i'll let you guys go through those things on your own time but they do a lot of work to get those things together just as a small token of their gratitude for helping them do the things that are necessary in their their school buildings to educate our our students i would like to offer a personal thanks for such a thankless job you guys have very difficult decisions that you have to make and they don't always make people happy but you are the ones that have stepped forward to take on that responsibility because you're passionate about children you're passionate about seeing them be successful you

015get to see with gracie and jeremiah the the fruits of that labor and so i'm glad that y'all are able to uh see some of the great things that are going uh tonight because uh you making decisions that allow that to happen uh is is very much appreciated so on behalf of amherst county public schools the staff and the students thank you very much for everything that you guys have done [Applause] well i just want to take the moment and just say how proud i am of all the presentations and the staff that we have um and the students um we'll talk about that a little bit more in our individual comments but it's just amazing what our our students can do and so i just want to say thank you and congratulations now we

016will be moving into public comments we have a few signed up tonight and we have some letters that we will be reading um in order to move forward we will be limiting comments to three minutes um mrs cecil are you there with us okay um the first person that i have on the list is michelle husher hughes i'm sorry it's okay hello do you want me to say my name yes ma'am all right my name is michelle hughes my address is 220 briarcliff lane madison heights virginia 24572 um i didn't even know if i was going to speak tonight because i spoke last time i just want you to know that when we left this meeting we got another call my granddaughter was out for another five days okay um now they want to hold

017her back because of all the time she's missed that's nine weeks of school she's in kindergarten she comes home dream i don't want to wear a mask i don't want to do it well baby right now that's what you got to do i was very disappointed in the decisions you guys made last time once you know you went against our governor miss thompson i i voted for you and one of the statements you made is you were going to be for the parents and getting our rights back it's air kids i laid down i gave birth to my children you don't have a right to make that decision if other parents want their kids to wear a mask wear a mask the last meeting you said that monroe or one of the schools was going

018to be out of school because 35 percent of the staff the staff had coveted or covet pending tests don't they wear a mask if mass work why would 35 of those staff members out answer me that and if they're for it then we're when they're out of school i've had code i'm vaccinated it's not that i'm against masks i wear a mask because i work in health care but if i don't want my kid to wear a mask they shouldn't have to one that one more thing before i'm done freedom is never more than one generation away from existing we didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream it must be fought for protected and handed on for them to do the same or one day we will spend air sunset years telling our

019children and our children's children what it was once like in the united states where men women and children were free ronald reagan [Applause] thank you mrs hughes the next speaker is kimberly townsend hey i'm kimberly townsend and i'm from 522 kenmore road amherst virginia so most of the words that i'm speaking today are someone else's but no worries i have the authority to speak them in the beginning on the sixth day god breathed the breath of life into adam and the man became a living man later god said i'm bringing flood waters onto the earth to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which the breath of life is in noah and his family got to keep breathing while the rest drowned it and no longer breathed the breath of life scripture says that those

020who walk accordingly to this world are walking accordingly to the prince of the power of air satan is the prince of the power of air but jesus is the king satan wants nothing more than to restrict our access to the father the king of the power of air our breath of life scripture says that the natural precedes the spiritual and it's important that we remember this any plan or mandate that restricts or puts a cover over our access to breathe is a scheme of satan i pray that you may come to your senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will jesus came to deliver those who through their fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery no one can serve two masters for the wages

021of sin is death but the free gift of god is eternal life in jesus christ god shows mercy to the merciful choose this day when you will serve give back our rights as parents to choose to unmask our children with no metrics tonight in the mighty name of jesus thank you thank you [Applause] the next speaker is dawn poole good evening my name is dawn poole i live at 2732 buffalo springs turnpike in monroe virginia um at the beginning of the pandemic my family we moved from amherst or from lynchburg to amherst um i was born and raised in amherst um left 20 years later came back um a big reason was because i felt this school system would do a better job educating my child um during a pandemic unfortunately the only experience she's

022had so far has been behind a mask or behind a computer screen she is um not had a normal day of school since third grade and she's going into sixth grade next year just let that sink in how long it's been we also moved back because we felt amherst was a close-knit community that had known trust among its community members and that brings me to my point today i want to know why the school board doesn't trust the parents to make decisions for our kids when our god and our governor does i've been in prayer in research mode since the last school board meeting trying desperately to find the words that may restore the board's trust and its parents the parents that voted many of you into your seats tonight the parents that voted at

02371 rate for our governor and the parents that will likely vote some of you out in the next election what i've come to realize is the trust factor is not only our county's problem but america's problem and it's been that way since the beginning of the pandemic dr jennifer nuzzo with john hopkins center for health security recently stated that it really comes down to public trust and when political leaders make a political issue out of simple biology it unfortunately deters people from getting vaccinated tonight i ask you school board members could the same be could it be the same reason that we don't want our kids to wear masks because we're being forced to you i'm very proud of how the parents in this county responded to your decision to uphold governor northam's mandate after

024you initially voted for a mass optional policy last year we complied peacefully and we promised our kids this wouldn't go on forever and tonight we ask you to comply with our democracy and uphold our new governor's order that is meant to restore public trust because in order to restore trust in the school board you must first trust us i'm not here to say that covet isn't real that vaccines don't work or even that mass don't work that is no longer the important debate what i'm here to say is that you as a school board should trust each of the parents to make our own decisions weighing all the risks including the mental health factor they are our kids your job is to educate our kids god gave us a responsibility to train our kids in

025the path they should go so that they will not leave that path in the future i ask that you give us that god-given responsibility let us make those choices for our kids thank you mrs poole [Applause] our next speaker tonight is john harper my name is john harper i live at 325 spring garden road monroe um first of all i like to reiterate what um dr arnold said about um thanking y'all for your service to the county to the school i know it's a thankless job and you do have to make hard decisions that being said i want to go over a few things and i'm going to go back in history a little bit march 30th 2021 the state legislator passed the law saying the kids were going back to school and they had

026to follow the cdc guidelines july 29 2021 it was a school board mate discussion on the matter of wearing masks no board member was wearing a mask during this meeting mr terry you started off um you said it's up to the parents and the students stated that you didn't feel anyone should have to wear a mask if they didn't feel it was best for them mr grouse you were second you said i'm a big believer in choice when given the opportunity to advocate to give parents the choice and the right i'm on the side of giving parents the choice of making decisions for their own kids miss thompson you agree with both now ms liggins i got to give you credit you've been the same way the whole time you say mass gone you never

027changed um after that dr arnold brought up the matrix and the board voted unanimously to um make masks not mandatory optional all right december 12 2021 governor northam made an order that mass were acquired in the schools there was a school board meeting the same night dr wells informed you all of that there was no discussion there was no bucking the new governor y'all did as you were told by the government which i i might not agree with it but it's the way it is january 18 2022 governor yonkin mandates that mask in school was parents in the students decision y'all don't agree with the government i don't know why y'all don't agree with letting the parents make a choice i don't know why you change your mind or why you don't agree with the

028new governor's order now the legislator looks like you're going to change the laws anyway but i think your board ought to revisit the issue and maybe reconsider ask yourself why you changed your views at one time you agreed that supporting the parents was the way to go thank you [Applause] next speaker is vance wilkins hi vance wilkins 299 to east monitor road amos virginia i don't envy you all tonight you got tough choices to make but i think we need to look at the balance this is the thing that i have the most concern about there are some kids who are and i never can pronounce their word correctly let me no deficient or whatever but they are more susceptible to catching diseases than others i think you need to make some kind of arrangement

029so that those kids if they can't come to school are not it's not safe if you're in school have an alternative way to be educated because they want to educate all the kids but if you look at the balance there are very few of those kids all the rest are being hampered in different ways somebody mentioned psychological all those things and those things add up and when you add all those up and we use the thing the uh the quarantine measures you have it's very difficult for the rest of the kids to get an education if you're quarantined for a week every other every two or three weeks you're not going to get a good education you have to do away with the quarantine provision that you have that you work under now you have

030to make sure that kids can come in to the school and get an education because our some of our kids are two are more than two years behind some of them will never catch up their lives for all the future needs to go into the balance as well as the few who have a serious problem with this so please make a an arrangement so that the children who are most susceptible to the disease and get an education and please give the rest of them an education thank you so much thank you mr wolf wilkins our next speaker is will tyler hi i'm will tyler i live at a 489 kenmore road in amherst and my daughter is a student at amherst elementary school today you're supposed to be setting the conditions by which you're going

031to lift what is now an indefinite mandate that you've created i'm not really sure how you can claim to be objective in deciding on a conditional mandate and then filling in the blanks two weeks later on top of that suggesting a metric that uh your mandate won't help won't change community spread i think it was and you know for that reason tonight i asked the board for the resignations of the people that voted for that i think that's mr greizer miss liggin mr terry miss thompson the bottom line is that you can't claim to be objective because this is a political mandate i ask for your resignations not just because i disagree with you but because through your statements actions and votes on january 27th you made it clear that your first priority is politics

032and not our children you made this political not the parents here for mask organs mass that was on you the school administration certainly played a part in that um you know through the school administration you had a uh you had a majority of you depending on a survey that was put out the survey was biased you also had a legal opinion that you could basically do whatever you wanted the gentleman before me mentioned that state bill 1303 was passed in march of last year in august you didn't seem to think that that mandated masks and yet you couch that as a reason for a binary choice between mandating masks and making masks optional that's not the case you didn't even do that you created your own conditional mask mandate that that's not a mask mandate

033per cdc guidelines if state bill 1303 mandated masks then you're in violation of that so now you're picking between executive order two and sp 1303 and using that as the excuse ultimately i think everybody can see it's political and i think you need to start putting children first that's it thank you thank you mr tyler that is all that i have signed up for public comment is there anyone else in the room that would like to come forward lady in the back if you can just state your name and your address please my name is theresa ray and i live at 253 sprouse drive amherst i am a subject matter expert in regards to n95 respirators n95s are not mass they are classified as respirators by osha their manufacturers and the cdc please stop adding

034the miss to the misinformation by calling them something that they are not they get their name because they are 95 efficient at filtering 0.3 microns and larger they allow 5 through hence the name n95 the virus ranges from 0.01 to 0.1 microns the largest virus particle is three times smaller than what the n95 can filter per ocean regulation 1910.15 the employer shall establish and implement a written respiratory protection program just a few requirements of the program include medical evaluations or physicals due to the psychological and physical burdens placed on individuals during proper use fit testing procedures documented training and the proper use of including putting on and removing them any limitations on their use and their maintenance a designated program administrator to oversee and administer the respiratory protection program and conduct the required evaluations of

035program effectiveness does amherst county public schools have a respiratory program and an administer to as required by osha now with that said osha does allow voluntary use if you voluntarily put it on you give up any rights that you have if you have a medical emergency parents do not allow them to give or require your children to wear an n95 respirator if they are worn properly they are very taxing on your respiratory system this is why a physical must be passed before use this is especially troubling after watching the chair casting the deciding vote and remove her mask only two hours and 19 minutes [Applause] but one [Applause] but want our children to wear a mask eight hours a day five days a week rules for thee but not for me mask use should be

036a parent's choice not yours i also understand that there are parents who are concerned for their children who have compromised immune systems if you decide your child should wear a mask please wear one now that brings me to the continuous stream of troubling issues constantly being pushed on our innocent children who have no uh who you have an obligation to protect issues include allowing convicted sex offenders on school property pornography in the libraries crt transgenders thank you mr fresh [Applause] is there anyone else in the audience i see a gentleman in the back with his hand raised you state your name and address please good evening uh my name is justin leary i live at 225 covey road amherst virginia i just like to start out by pointing out that this has become a political

037matter if we would all just step back for a second and use common sense and look at this thing look at how it's damaging our children i have three children in the amherst county school system they have enough to worry about as developing into young adults if the first thing they do is come home and complain about a mask that's like the farthest thing from what they should be worrying about is developing adults it's sickening to me if you feel that mass truly do work you have a mask on you have a mask on i don't are you protected right now can you answer that question so that's where it comes into pro-choice we all have pro-choice to do what we feel is right we live in america it's everybody's right it's my right to

038decide for me my children and i'm always going to make the right decision for me and my children i don't feel it's right that you made that decision for me it's totally wrong and i think deep down you all know that that's all i have to say you mr leary i believe we had a hand over here yes sir good evening sids derozan 362 peters hollow road monroe virginia why is our school board still a member of the virginia school boards association this organization which provides minimal administrative help to us is essentially a political organization they engage in political activity we spend over ten and a half thousand well i think ten and a half thousand dollars of taxpayer money to belong to them this current year they are an advocate against parents including the

039bill that just passed the general assembly which is going to put an end to the mass issue i think they they are always against parent choice and parent involvement in the schools they feed you you deceptive talking points and our administration deceptive talking points to use against the citizens citizenry for example when dr arnold stated we don't teach critical race theory that came right out of a publication that was sent to all the school superintendents they walk in lockstep with the national school boards association even though they claim they're going to get out of that in seven months i don't think it's going to be a meaningful disassociation they walk in lockstep with the teachers unions and also the bureaucracy in washington d.c right up to the biden administration and the attorney general who all

040felt that parents had no role to play in guiding the education of their children when it came to going before school boards dr arnold's proposed regulation to censor public comment at these meetings which was thankfully rejected by our board probably also had its origins with vsba or some other allied leftist organization the vsba does not represent the interests of our children it doesn't represent the interest of the vast majority of our teachers it certainly doesn't represent the interests of our taxpayers and this school board should vote tonight to get out of the bsba thank you thank you mr sterrosom is there anyone else in the audience tonight yes sir i'm jeff porter 478 woody's lake drive madison heights virginia i'm here to ask you as a board to seek information about what has been the

041consequence of children having to wear masks in school for as long as they have i'm asking that you take this seriously not just take what the cdc has to say but to find out for yourselves and if you can't find it out try to find where you can it is important that we understand the kind of damage and harm we've done to our children i think this needs to be looked at and talked about in a very real way not just referring to we just go along with what cdc says cdc is not our god cdc is not our government [Applause] finally what i'd like to say is that i think that it is important for us as citizens in this country to always have choice all mandates take away that choice that is unforgivable

042in a country like ours [Applause] thank you mr porter um i have a lady back here good evening my name is sunny stonelike 245 old farm road amherst we've discussed about masks but we haven't discussed about the metrics which you talked about you wanted to talk about there shouldn't be any metrics it's my choice as a parent to send my kid to a school with a mask or not it is my choice if they're sick to send them or not i'm not sending them my son has been wearing a mask since the being of school and guess who's home today's sick my son why because the masks work we said everybody need to get the vaccine to stop the spread has it stopped the spread it hasn't but yet he has to be home because

043he's sick now i have to take him to a doctor because he's sick what i'm asking is that we stop with the metrics let them make their choice if they're going to come to school or not long before covet ever happened if my kids were sick they didn't go to school they came now it was nice because if i keep them home they're like well they're sick oh good keep them home well that's what i've been doing since they started school it just makes sense the challenge is now they keep getting quarantined we're talking about mental health we have a mental health sign no one has talked about mental health my kids absolutely love being in school but they don't want to go my daughter yesterday attended the regions for swim so she missed school

044legitimate reason she didn't come with me tonight because she's sitting at the computer crying because she has so much work to catch up on and she missed school for a legitimate reason she is poised to go to wherever she wants to go cvcc stem gupp school she's got straight a's but i have never seen her so uptight and frustrated she said a mom i'm afraid to go because i'm afraid of the consequences if i stand up for myself are they going to take those things away from me we're talking about mental health at this point we're not talking about a disease that we have a virus we have a flu we have a cold we deal with it every year it's the same thing we have to learn to live with kovid being here i'm

045tired of the 5 30 calls this is what our cases are today this is what our cases are today we shouldn't have cases cases don't equal death these children need to live a normal life it has been two years telling them that they need to come with a mask and telling them that they can't go to school if they don't have a mask telling them that they have to stay home if they're healthy even though they don't have it my kids have been quarantined more this year when we've had masks and we've had vaccines than they were before any of that came out so it's not working but we're really messing with our kids heads they really don't want to even be at school my son said if i could drop out i would he's

04616 years old he's on the football team he swims he does archery he does soccer and he doesn't even want to be there and that makes me want to cry for him thank you [Applause] is there anyone else in the room tonight that would like to speak like seeing none we have some letters that we will read you have some i've got one okay um this is from miss bob uh miss bobby lauren i largen i believe says good evening i'd like to write this letter and have it read at the school board meeting on february 10th the time has come to let the parents decide what is that what is right for their children or child what gives you the right to tell me what is right for my family you don't know my

047family so how can you possibly know what is right for us i have some info here that i think you might want to be made aware of my fourth grader is on the archery team at central elementary school they had an archery tournament at amherst county high school on saturday january 15th everyone there made a big deal about parents wearing their masks in order to attend the tournament so we did at one point before the tournament got underway a person who was supposedly in charge of running the tournament got on the microphone and screamed that if we didn't wear our masks we would have to leave later in the tournament there was a gentleman who did not have a mask on he was asked to put a mask on in order to be able to

048stay he kindly refused the person supposedly in charge of the tournament started yelling at him and asked him to leave he then threatened to call the police on him and have him arrested are you serious having someone arrested for not wearing a mask it was then announced over the microphone by the same gentleman running the tournament that if masks were not worn the tournament would be canceled this person in charge of the tournament was plain rude and arrogant this is in no way how to set an example for our kids fortunately the kids were able to finish the tournament that being said tell me why there were basketball games on saturday february 5th at the high school and a majority of the people in the stands did not have masks on do the same rules

049not apply to basketball games as they do to archery spectators there are pictures posted on facebook and it clearly shows students as well as adults without their masks on my question why was the archery tournament threatened to be canceled over one person not wearing a mask but the basketball games that were played over the weekend were good to go also the amherst county high school swim team had a swim meet at jamerson y on friday february 4th yet no one was allowed to attend no spectators allowed spectators were allowed at the basketball games without masks on but not at a swim meet tell me how that makes any sense it seems like there is a double standard here that is not fair to students or their parents when is this going to end you do

050not know what is best for my child that is my job the parent if parents want their child or children to continue to wear masks that is their right just like it is my right to say no to these masks for my children thank you for your time bobby largent the next letter is from sam jacobs from amherst county high school hello amherst county public school board i'm writing to you to express my sadness my disappointment and my outrage at your decision made on thursday january 27 2022 to alter the existing mass mandate in our public schools please bear with me this might be a little disjointed as i try to cover all the areas surging through my brain right now but the safety of my students and of my family are paramount to me

051as the heads of the school system sometimes making decisions especially unpopular ones is difficult however in terms of completing one of your main responsibilities keeping the students the staff and all their family safe to the best of your ability the decision on the masking policy should not have been hard to make when you are making decisions that affect the health and the safety of people that are your responsibility you always choose the safest course always on january 27th you just regarded your responsibility and made the other choice the school system is supposed to promote the benefits of a good education by taking advantage of the education opportunities provided by your public schools at a citizen you become a more knowledgeable and more capable member of society with further education if that is the choice you

052make in life you have the opportunity to specialize in your learning to become a specialist in your field that will provide more benefit to society into your own personal life as a result we have members of our government and services that our government provides and leans on that provide expert advice and recommendations for the benefit of our citizens these organizations support the theories that all educational organizations have always supported that people become experts in the field through education and experience and have more accurate and knowledgeable theories than a layperson the cdc and the health department are two such services and they both recommend masking by making a decision that is contrary to that advice you set the school board as an expert in this subject insinuating that you know better than the doctors and scientists

053to say when your students should mask and not these types of decisions are not the board's specialty according to the education you have received and have chosen to pursue up until this point the school board has made good supportive decisions with their approach to navigating the pandemic the board has followed the law and recommendations of the cdc and department of health over the course of the last two years and have followed the recommendations of the experts as knowledgeable as knowledge has been expanded and new facts have been discovered about the pandemic the school system has incorporated new recommendations from the cdc and the health department and adjust their policies while everyone wishes that the situation was over that we know all there was to know to protect ourselves and our families and that the rules

054wouldn't continue to change in ever confusing ways the next one is from heather wert my name is heather wert i live at 190 deerfield drive no matter how many times they have tried to come to a school board meeting it is never possible because i work and now i cannot afford to miss work anymore between my husband and i we have missed 10 weeks of work total over a period of six months our home has been hit with covered twice on top of each of my two children getting quarantined now two to three times each if it wasn't for my husband and mothers watching our children we would have missed even more at what point does someone from amherst county start paying my bills for sending my healthy children home twice since your last meeting

055i have had my children sent home five days for contact contact exposure there were no symptoms no tests to stay perfectly healthy then they go back on strict mass policy for five more days the one time i had the school give me a coveted rapid test it was expired by three months but they had received it three weeks prior i have personally kept my kids home every time they had a symptom to be courteous of others and because it is the right thing to do i expect others to do the same as parents each of my girls that attend elan elementary have had covet and each time i alert elon as soon as i knew i have followed protocol each time at this point in time our policies make no sense either we fit these

056kids and n95s every day or let them be mask-free because obviously the homemade and paper masks make no sense cdc even has said they don't do much if we are still quarantining entire classrooms every time one child in the class gets coveted my kids had missed 11 days and 14 days of schools between the two of them as of the last report card now add another five of quarantine each to that in the month of january they literally went to school a total of seven days each due to quarantine and snow now 10 days into february they have only went three days to pat my children on the back they have maintained straight a's through this craziness but as far as mental health we have definitely had behavioral issues and they are directly related to

057the masks also i had a teacher tell my child that kovit came from animals and good and china is good what in the world fact of the matter is none of us know where it came from and china's government is very different than ours which is not good my children miss seeing their friends faces my oldest has been caught hiding behind her mask at home when she has gotten in trouble at this point we are all overly informed about what covid can do it is difficult for everyone no doubt everyone should be able to decide if they want to wear a mask or not if they want a vaccine or not if vaccines and masks work then what are we doing let's stop kicking this can down the road and be done with the masks

058already let parents decide if the slogan every child every day were accurate then my kids would be in school [Applause] all right the next one is from mark brooks uh dear amherst county school board i grew up in emerson county and still live in the area i cannot believe our local school board has decided to ignore science and damage our children by enforcing a masking policy to the detriment of our children please use some common sense in making these decisions our educational system is going down the tubes thanks to the radical teachers union and our leaders not taking a stand for the benefit of our most valuable asset and future leaders of our community so disappointed in you sincerely mark brooks [Applause] um and mr terry will read the last letter oh see my name

059is jennifer berry and i live in madison heights i have a seventh grader at minelson middle school and a fifth grader at elon elementary school and the kindergartner at temple christian i have been a nurse for 20 years and i've spent 18 years of my career as an rn in the emergency department lynchburg general as both a mother and a caregiver i feel it is just as important to consider them consider the mental health of our children as much as their physical health in an article posted in the american academy of pediatrics the most recent data has shown that children are at a very low risk of becoming severely ill due to covet 19. in fact only 0.1 to 1.5 percent of the children with covet 19 are hospitalized in this same report it was

060shown that only 0.00 to 0.01 percent of all child covid19 cases resulted in death on the other hand the cdc noted in a recent report that the from the march 2020 to october 2020 mental health related emergency department visits increased by 24 percent of children ages 5 to 11 and by 31 percent children ages 12 to 17 when compared to 2019 these kids are suffering from a pandemic and not just physically they need to be able to socialize with their peers they need to be able to see and read facial expressions and social cues and they need to be in school regularly without being quarantined repeatedly one of my daughter's friends has been quarantined four times since thanksgiving these children are suffering emotionally socially academically and physiologically i am respectively respectfully requesting the optional mass

061policy with no contact tracing be considered the severity of cover 19 and children no longer wants the aggressive mitigation strategies put in place in the fall of 2020 i feel the evidence strongly supports that mask wearing lack of socialization and repeated isolation of children is much more detrimental to their overall health we need to stop instilling fear in our children and start helping them process the craziness of the last two years please allow our kids to go back to normal uninterrupted school year respectfully jennifer barry [Applause] thank you our public comment has now closed um board we will move on to action items for our consent agenda do i have a motion uh motion to approve the consent agenda as a presented can i have a um first from a motion from mr greiser in

062a second from mrs legging all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay consent agenda passes now we're going to be moving on to action item 5 6.01 thank you all right there we go thank you so you had that draft calendar before you that was provided to you last month for your first review we've provided some information regarding the data that was collected from staff over time and the priorities that were identified and how the acps counter committee developed that draft we asked tonight that you take a look at that draft and consider approval of the 2022-2023 school calendar and i'll take any questions if you have thank you mr gallagher board do you have any questions concerning the school calendar or comments that you wish to make okay if there are no questions

063then i believe that we want a motion tonight whether we will accept this calendar or not madam chair i'd like to make a motion to approve the calendar please okay we have a motion to approve the calendar by mrs berg do i have a second second second by mr greiser all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay motion carries thank you all right we're gonna move on to um 7.02 no i'm i'm off um let's do 6.02 uh yes madam chair tonight we're asking that you consider approval of the vpsa resolution i've invited mr rt taylor he is the financial advisor for davenport and they work with the county government and this is all in regards to moving the ball forward on the construction project that you guys have already approved but we have

064to have a resolution to move forward with that as well so i i brought him to kind of explain what that document is saying to you thank you dr arnold and thank you board for having me here this evening um as dr arnold said my name is rt taylor i'm with dave important company and we've been working with the county as financial advisor for many years now what you have before you this evening is a fairly standard resolution it does two things one it authorizes the school to apply to the virginia public school authority spring pool which they plan to price in mid-april time frame the application is due by february 28th and we are working to help the school board and the county pull that application and the credit materials that go with it

065to the to the vpsa folks the second thing that the resolution accomplishes is it asks the makes the request of the county to issue its geo school debt obligations through the bpsa pool issuance this spring um you can see by the description in the resolution under the first paragraph it's related to the amherst county high school and includes renovations and additions that are listed there if you would just look at the amounts here that are referenced in this first paragraph you'll notice that the um not to exceed par amount which is the the principal of the debt you would issue would not exceed 35 million now the projects that we've identified that you all aware of are the new money projects totaling about 19.6 million okay and we're going through various analyses with the county

066on their side to figure out what the best balance is between cash and debt and that's to be determined but for purposes of the resolution we're trying to set the not to exceed parameters so we don't have to come back to you all to make another decision or another quest and to fit within the county's board time frame of making a decision as well as vpsa's criteria and key dates that we have to meet so this is a not to exceed amount of 35 million dollars and i mentioned your new money projects of 19.6 million dollars that we've discussed in the december and january meetings with the county board you also have a loan from 2016 outstanding in about 11.4 million dollar principal amount you may recall a couple years ago in the fall of

0672020 you actually had two energy efficiency loans one was with u.s bank one was with the pinnacle bank we refunded in the fall vpsa pool then the one with the u.s bank now we're looking at the other one and right now it's making sense based on current market interest rates so we're going to continue monitor that if it doesn't make sense by the time vpsa prices its bonds it will just fall away but we're hoping that rates will hang in there for us and it will help create some savings to offset the debt service related to the new money that you're issuing so that's sort of big picture what's going on with the resolution and why we're here to answer any questions this evening okay board do you have any questions for mr taylor um

068i had a question madam chair on the amounts yes ma'am um how do we come up with the amount that you have on there cecile doesn't have it up right now but no that's that's quite all right so for the 35 million dollar not to exceed that's the maximum principal amount i'll go through that in just a minute but the other amount is the 31 million 250 okay so if you add the 19.6 of new money for the for the new renovations high school and the stadium softball fields and the career and tech center that are listed in the resolution those totaled up to about 19.6 million dollars okay in addition to that the other 11.4 11.5 million dollars is related to that refunding amount so if you total this together you get to the

06931 million dollars okay you just lost me on that last part you've got roughly 20 million dollars in new projects and 11 and a half million in refunding okay rolling over hold that that's right you're you're trying to take out old debt by refinancing it like similar to refinancing your house only we're not trying to add another 10 years to it we're doing a match maturity so we're not extending the debt in any way and this is about the hvac correct the hvac project yeah we did two energy efficiency hvac projects in 2016. one loan we already refinanced in 2020 and now the other one is eligible for refinancing without penalties so that's why we're looking at it now back back when we did the first when we refinanced the other hvac loan that the

070that one was eligible to be re refinanced but this one was not it had a no call period now it's eligible to be called and refinanced without penalty and how long of a process is it going to be to even pay these off uh oh bear with me there was a 15-year loan [Music] 30 20 31. let me look at real quick bear with me one second no you're fine i've got the materials that we presented right here so bear with me one second i'll look up the refunding component yes that's right i had it right in my head i just want to confirm it so that matures in fiscal 2031. and that's when we have set for the refinancy would not extend beyond that same time frame okay so you're currently scheduled if you

071did nothing that 2016 loan would be paid off in 2031. okay the refinancing if we do it will pay off in 2031. all right thank you yes ma'am madam chair madam chairman of course justice you have the floor okay um by refinancing it is this saving us money or refund that's the goal so the way what you all are doing this evening is considering the resolution in front of you to ask the county to go out on your behalf basically through the vpsa spring pool program to issue their go their general obligation debt to take out the old bonds in addition to the getting the new money for your new projects yes ma'am anyone else i have a quick question i know that the school is contributing some money to this is that part of

072this refinancing and then we will contribute or is this financing the amount we're financing is in addition to what the school's putting in and that's what i was alluding to earlier this is a not to exceed resolution so we're we're we're assuming we wouldn't use any reserves to pay down the projects in in this resolution because we're still refining the analysis with the county to see what we actually want to borrow we do know we have a pot of money so to speak from arpa as well as some reserves that we're going to use strategically to help us grow into the debt service over the next several years but if we are not going to borrow any more debt than we need to to accomplish the mission okay thank you yes ma'am board anything else

073for mr taylor okay thank you sir yes ma'am thank you um and dr arnold i'm correct that we need to make a motion to pass the resolution madam chair mr graser oh well i i want to thank the board of supervisors because it's back to us because they've given it a preliminary nod and so i appreciate their support in the schools but uh and if you have a motion i do try to make it my motion is to approve the resolution so can you make that motion again i move to approve the resolution as presented okay uh mr geiser makes a motion to approve the vpsa resolution as presented do i have a second second have a second from mr terry all in favor oh we have i think i think uh bond council has

074indicated that you that you have to have a roll call though okay um well we have a second so it's going to ask for discussion and then we can take the roll call thank you all right um is there anybody that wants to speak for this um anybody want to speak against this okay there's no discussion we'll take a vote um mr rossi yes miss justice yes miss berg yes mr greiser yes uh miss leggin yes and mr terry yes okay motion carries and you yes but i figured okay motion carries um all right so now we're coming down to information items um 7.01 update on administrative services yes ma'am uh as far as administrative services going so this is a segue into uh the construction projects that are getting ready to get started and

075going on currently uh just an update on the high school auditorium and the uh softball baseball building as well as the uh football upgrades uh we continue to have bi-weekly meetings with cra they will actually have a representative here in the county on the 21st to do some preliminary walk-arounds and i think at your place there is a timeline that shows pretty much what we talked about over the next uh several months i think how you can pull that up for us thank you over the next six to seven months we'll be doing the uh design phase going through that again working with um staff members at the high school as well who will be directly involved in utilizing these areas to getting their input and we plan to do that here in the next

076few weeks and to go through the design phase go through get the construction documents and those type of things and hopefully get uh everything bit out uh in the late fall of this year to the uh to the general contractors and stuff with hopefully the beginning of construction starting uh somewhere in mid to 2023 with a final completion uh by june of 2024 about 16 to 18 months of construction and that's for the auditorium part uh the phase two which includes the renovation phases inside with cte uh the cafeteria uh the food court and those items like we've discussed in the past we obviously know that a lot of that work is going to have to occur over the two summers and we will schedule those to that has the most the least impact upon

077the student student body while the students are not there in school in the summer time so we can utilize those spaces the best we can and of course lastly would be the uh the softball and baseball field house as well as the ada upgrades to the lancer stadium and we can also we're looking at trying to run those programs concurrently with the construction as they are totally independent of the school itself and we're trying to utilize the time as well again taking consideration the sports schedules with football soccer track baseball softball all those elements that use those various parts of the property there so this is the schedule i think you have it at your place we obviously will continue to provide you updates as we progress along and uh so it'll be a a

078monthly discussion as well we're progressing through this any questions as far as a high school project would you have any questions thank you mr rose yes the next thing of course we have this summer as well we're giving a sunday rfp on this will be the bathroom renovations at central elementary school i've talked to uh principal adams and assistant principal ferguson this week uh to do a general walk around next week and we'll be sending out that rfp as well and then again that construction project or renovation project for the bathrooms as we have done in other schools in the past uh we'll start at the end of school this year and uh we'll finish up by you know august time frame so we have it ready for the students when they come back at

079central elementary and the last thing that sort of impacts the school systems as well is the construction project they started on woody's lake road i've talked to um vdot the person in charge of edot as well as i went today and spoke to the general contractor just doing face to face they have started clearing the woods and those type of things down in woody's lake they will start approximately the next two weeks getting flagging and uh they'll have that one lane traffic starting at about the next two weeks or so is what they're estimating depending upon the weather and uh so the they're aware of the school buses coming through they know they will work to get those school buses the best we can of course we want to do it safely and we we

080talked about those topics and of course the major impact we'll have on us is this summer uh trojan lane will be blocked off this summer uh due to to read during the whole intersection trojan lane and woodys lake road and of course with that we've also made modifications to our summer school schedule and moved all the summer school and activities at models and middle school to other facilities that dr norman stuff can address as well so we already addressed those scheduling conflicts but again part of the contractor's contract is the fact that they have to get that intersection complete by time school ends and when it starts back in august so they are aware of those thank you mr rose yes ma'am um student suspensions 7.02 yeah madam chair you you have uh attached on

081board docs the list of student suspensions for january uh if there are any questions i'll do the best i can to answer them board okay thank you dr arnold now we're down to information island items update on accountability measures oh i'm sorry yes 8.01 budget finance monitoring report good evening madame chair members of the school board tonight we're presenting the finance reports through january 31st you have your detailed local receipts you have your revenue and expenditure report for your school operating budget as well as a child nutrition budget and lastly you have your january attendance report i want to go back to the revenue we're still holding strong i had mentioned that we would start seeing in january some of those revenue lines that didn't have any receipts those are those lottery funded and we

082you will see that we started getting some of those in there you will you will still see some that have no receipts and there are some that are categorical and you will not see those coming in until like may or june so everything is coming in as anticipated the sales tax we do monitor that ongoing because although it's it is just projections it's not guaranteed and we are in line with even the most recent december projection so the revenue is strong the object code report i'm going to sound like a broken record because i'm going to take you to page two we're still we still have the same items on the watch list and the in the area of the utilities and the fuel the heat the water waste and water and the fuel there

083are 5102 5103 and 6008 and we're still holding back looking at the electrical to be where you would get the savings to cover that that concludes the report if you have any questions or any questions okay thank you very much okay now we're going to move down to 9.01 uh accountability measures yes ma'am madam chair and members of the board um the first thing you have at your place a memo from miss mullen camp in regards to next week february 13th through the 20th which is virginia kindness week just explaining a little bit about that and then what is being taken place at some of our schools and what's going on with our through our school counseling program as well as our classroom teachers and that's just for your information the piece on accountability what

084i'd like to bring to the board tonight is in regards to remote learning day extension request as you know last week last board meeting i provided information on the number of days that we have utilized for remote learning the general assembly passed house bill senate 1790 and senate bill which goes along with the virginia code of 180 days or when 990 hours of instructional time and it allowed for 10 remote days where we can do virtual learning and instruction with our students and this is based on inclement weather this is based on any specifics of a school issue that we maybe that we may have that would close the school that we would need to not run that school for the day what those two bills actually did was um put into place stipulations in

085regarding to covid and it aligned our information with what the virginia department of health is with cdc guidelines with what legislation is and the virginia department of education allowed for each school to have 10 remote days that they could utilize within their 180 days or 990 hours we have utilized nine of those 10 days already for the three of our secondary schools which also would include aec and at our elementary schools we have utilized elon elementary has utilized three and the rest of our elementary schools have utilized two we are requesting we would like to request the virginia department of education to give us an extension of five additional days just for our secondary schools with additional inclement weather that we may have of those that we have taken nine two of them have been

086due to snow and inclement weather that we utilize for virtual learning and then the rest were due to covet i do need a consensus of the board in regards to this request if we do not utilize or do not request those additional days we would have to close school and not have any instructional instruction take place to remain within our 990 hours and i'll answer any questions and board members do you have any questions for dr norman um i i have one that's no one announced this can you explain to me i know that we have built-in days yes that we use for inclement weather um so why were we why did we use to remote so that it used up the remote days that we are able to do one of the things that

087we did that this board did earlier on in the year and mr gallagher you can chime in anytime is we added days back into the calendar for professional work days for our teachers which dr drove down our days that we had padded into the 990 hours so we still have those that were available to utilize for inclement weather or any other issues and i will tell you that we are not the only division that has that we'll be requesting we already have many around us who have made those requests as well well and as it stands we have 13.8 remaining days to stay within the 990 that's how many days we have left to to utilize and in light of any potential inclement weather that comes up you know we may be utilizing that for

088those so we're just trying to keep that buffer there too so it won't go beyond that and then push instruction further into june so 13.8 is the current amount remaining and if i can also let you know when we get into a 60-day window with um towards the end of the year when we get up to 30 that cuts off our request time so i'd rather go ahead and make the request and not use the days than to get to a point later on in the year where i don't have the option to make that request understood okay any other questions from the board okay sarah she said a consensus but we're certainly both open to emotion consensus or emotion i just need a consensus of the board it does not need to be voted

089on i think it makes it cleaner madam chair i move that we approve the submission of the request as presented okay thank you mr geiser second miss legging she seconds it so all in favor uh any opposed thank you very much i appreciate that the second item that i have on the agenda is in regards to an update on sr2 and sr3 part 2 grant we provided information just on the fact that we were going to start applying for any grants that were available out there so we can utilize those funds that are available to any school division in the in the state we submitted a grant sr2 part two which was a social emotional learning grant under the cares act the first one back in november 12th we were awarded that january 7th for

09060 thousand dollars and what we will be doing with that just to give you an update it will fund one of the positions that we have have in our plan which is a school climate specialist this is only a one year contract because it is it is cares funded and so it would not go into our operational budget but it really is to play a critical role in improving student performance and connecting our students and families with support in our community bridging the gap for our students who have shown anxiety coming back into the school and providing some supports for our administrators as well as our teachers the second grant that we were awarded we got applied for that it was esser3 part two it was before and after school and a summer school program

091we applied for it november 23rd and we were awarded that on january 28th um we received 181 000 um around there our before and after school program received about a hundred and five thousand dollars in our summer school program received about seven hundred seven hundred a hundred and seventy thousand dollars that program will actually start in the twenty two twenty three school year the before and after school program will and work with targeting specifically those students learning loss below grade level our tier three students our most at-risk students and then in our summer programs that is going to focus on credit recovery for our secondary level as well those math and reading supports for those kids who are below grade level that will take place from june 15th through july 15th of this school year

0922022. um so we're excited that we were actually recipients of the funding and hopefully that will be a huge help to close the learning loss gaps that we see thank you dr norman any questions for dr norman madam chair ms berg yes dr norman i was curious how many reading specialists do we currently have in this school we only have reading specialists at our elementary schools our title one schools and i think we have a total of 11 thank you through all the elementary schools yes ma'am and with our reading specialists are we keeping track of that do we see a lot of progress with that and i was also i'm concerned about bringing in some more reading specialists to help our students we by law we're required to take the pals assessment which is

093a reading inventory we track that with our reading specialist every kid in elementary k-5 takes that at the beginning of the year and the end of the year and we are seeing progress but not at the rate that our second graders are are struggling probably the most and that is because we have seen they've had in 2019 they lost that year um because we closed school and then last year it was four days a week rather than five days a week and so they're the ones that we're seeing the biggest uh gap with on learning loss um and so we're we're pushing into classrooms our reading specialists are doing a phenomenal job with our kids but yes and that's for the elementary those are for elementary yeah and then what are we doing for our

094middle school and also our high school because i'm speaking with teachers we have high school students suffering right now that with a great reading loss and we need to do something about that we've cut um we've kind of carved out this year positions that were in our operational budget that we're utilizing between the two middle schools one of our teachers is actually working with like an instructional coach specific to reading she spends four days at monalisa middle school and one day at amherst middle school working with tier three students and those teachers and then at the high school we have a english teacher who is works as an instructional coach specifically there she teaches half of the day works with struggling students and teachers in collab classes to work with those students that are below

095grade level at the high school we do not have funded positions in the operational budget for reading specialists at the secondary level those were removed probably and well before i ever got here and what could we do to get those back in that budget i'll let dr arnold answer that dr arnold that's that's basically up to the board a budget and we certainly can i would like to put down that we definitely need to look into putting that into the budget we'll have our budget retreat on march the 3rd i believe okay thank you so much um also just a backup comment i know that we have given priorities to you dr arnold and so that you can collectively look at those sure okay dr norman read across america yes ma'am i'm very excited to

096have this presentation we the instructional team here in the office led by robin wheeler and craig maddox ruth matheny and shannon presnell they have taken and combined what we have our literacy program along with our careers our cte program and created a huge initiative that will take place in the month of march and it is called read across amherst careers and i'm going to turn it over to mr maddox to kind of present this information to you along with the other members of the staff madam chair members of the board just want to thank you so much for giving us time to talk about our read across america career storybook to celebrate literacy career exploration in amherst county for the national reading month and read across america day this was a collaborative effort between illiteracy

097and cte departments so i'd like to introduce our team so for those that do not know me and new board members i'm craig maddox i'm the supervisor of career and technical education and assessment miss robin wheeler she is a supervisor of literacy and federal programs mr shannon presnell he is the cte coordinator and he is overseeing our k-12 career awareness programs and last but not least ruth matheny and she is the literacy instructional support specialist okay she is the one who came up with this idea she has facilitated the whole project from start to finish so she has kept the rest of the team straight and on task she did an awesome job and i think you'll see that as we move through the presentation tonight so as we talk about february is also national

098cte month so when we start looking at what we're doing with this a lot of the things our initiatives and our goals with our cte program aligns with this project so and i'm not going to read through everyone but make sure we provide opportunities to our students increase exposure to careers in our region and develop developing relevant 21st century skills for our students increasing career exploration and awareness for students beginning with our youngest you know now we have to have a career awareness program in our elementary schools exploration through online resources such as virginia career view and a virtual wizard and the last two are probably the two most important increased parental and community involvement and awareness about initiatives and activities offered to our students and developing partnerships with local businesses and organizations to provide

099authentic learning experience mr presnell and myself have been working with several different companies and really taking our students with our jag program at the high school and getting those students out into the world of work and taking them to the businesses so they can see that environment some of the partnerships we have with old dominion job corps iron lives ymca swim to work our cte academy at cvcc which you know that's part of the academy where we can students i guess programs that we do not offer on our campus our students can take them at cvcc campus dual enrollment opportunities with the university of lynchburg this is new we're really trying to concentrate right now on our teachers for tomorrow program and getting dual enrollment with the university of lynchburg and then our local businesses

100everybody modine cooper steel and so many more cse and we also have some job shadowing opportunities mr presnell has been out in the community and and drumming up some of these opportunities for our students um so here i think at your place do you have the hard copy at your place you have a hard copy of the storybook which was printed by mr presnell and our image and technology students so now i'm going to turn over the rest of the presentation to miss wheeler and miss methini thank you so as mr maddox said you have a copy of the storybook and mrs matheny we'll spend some time talking to you about how we set that up as well as the resource document that kind of hit on this for you this evening as to why

101we developed this project mrs matheny did come to us with this idea and we thought that it really was a good idea to showcase our cte programs opportunities that our students have in the community in regards to careers as well as be able to celebrate read across america day which is celebrated typically on march the 2nd nationwide and then literacy month which is in the month of march we wanted this book to be able to show our students that work can be fun but that literacy is also very important in their success as they enter the work field it supports our virginia 5cs and our profile of a virginia graduate a lot of times our students don't understand what it is that they're learning in the classroom and how that's going to transfer once they

102enter the workforce and so we're hoping that this resource kind of helps them to see that path in regards to the virginia's 5cs a lot of our community members that collaborated with us spoke to critical thinking problem solving and communication being critical aspects in their job the careers that we outlined in our book came out of the virginia career clusters provided to us through the virginia department of education we were able to represent 13 of the 16 career clusters in our book although all of the career clusters are represented in some manner some double up for example business management a lot of our community partners spoke about how they owned their own businesses so mrs matheny is really going to take you through the book show you how to use it and what our goal

103is with this book there are 26 careers represented in our book one for each letter of the alphabet ranging from agriculture to zoning and we've collaborated with many community members including parents of amherst county students recent amherst county graduates we've also collaborated with an amherst county school board member staff and more this is an example of a page from one of our books that highlights one of our acps graduates as you see on each page at the top you'll find the community partners information their name their job title their organization or business they've also included a picture so that students can get a better idea of what the job is like our community partners have explained what they enjoy most about their job why they love doing that as their career and how literacy skills

104are important in their day-to-day responsibilities at the bottom of the page you'll find that we've linked the career cluster information fact sheet from virginia view website so that students can learn a little bit more about that career as well as a featured book that students can click to listen to and although these books are geared more towards elementary students in our book we've linked book links for all students of all ages not just elementary students so that they can learn more about those careers these qr codes are actually interactive so parents and students who are accessing this book can either scan it with their phone or if they are viewing the pdf version of their book they can actually click on the qr code link without having to scan to get those resources we actually

105plan to use this book in a lot of different ways one we wanted to make it accessible to our students and families so that they can access that at home so on our social media and school websites we'll have the interactive pdf available and we'll also make that interactive pdf available to teachers as well so they can use them in their classroom in addition we are hoping to print a copy of the book to provide to all of our school libraries so they actually have a hard copy uh one additional thing that we wanted to share with you is that we will be hosting our second virtual title one story time event for the year during the month of march and as we kick off read across america and national reading month we'll actually have

106mr presnell be our guest reader reading the book when i grow up al yankovic to our students and we're hoping that our attendees will share with them a little bit more about our career awareness programs or cte programs as well as literacy resources that families can use at home to support literacy we'll also be showing them a preview of a book just like we did with you tonight and showing them how to access that information at home so if you are available on march 1st at 7 pm we'd love for you to join us by zoom and attend to hear all the great information that we're going to be sharing with families we're also working with amherst county high school to help coordinate a virtual reading event in which our high school students are actually

107going to serve as guest readers for our elementary students so that's a really exciting thing that we've got going on to celebrate read across america day and of course we are encouraging all of our schools to come up with creative ways to celebrate reading and literacy during the month of march and beyond and lastly we wanted to close out our presentation tonight with just a quote for students in our community about the importance of literacy and it says that literacy is the foundation of lifelong learning it is the single most significant skill needed to function effectively in school in the workplace and in society it is vital to a successful education career and quality of life so we'll be happy to answer any questions that you have and thank you so much thank you thank

108you um sounds very very exciting uh lots of good things going on in our division from read across america to um so many other things we've talked about tonight so many many kudos board do you have any questions or comments what time was that event 7 pm march 1st okay thank you very much moving on to items for information human resources okay madam chair mr co-chair members of the board you have a few memos from me in front of you the first one is our current vacancy memo for the month of february as you can see those numbers tend to ebb and flow month to month we continue to do our very best to promote our positions and to hire excellent candidates into those positions but we still have positions that are open to phil

109it's worthy of note that some of those positions for example secretary come from individuals have been promoted into hired into other positions and therefore leave that vacant to be filled so but i will take any questions that you may have regarding the numbers or any of that information report any questions on the vacancies yes madam chair uh miss berg um mr gallagher i was curious on the bus driver positions are those part-time full-time these are full-time bus driver positions full-time thank you so much you're welcome oh well i'm sorry could i ask um i was wondering um if anybody looked into perhaps helping out the bus drivers yet with the cdls with paying for the cdl license i mentioned that before when we were talking about the buses that is something that we can certainly

110uh provide support with we are currently training individuals and certainly that is a resource that dr wells and i will be looking into to provide all right well thank you so much anyone else okay moving on thank you mr gallagher you're welcome you also have a memo that outlines our 2022-2023 acps professional development plan uh that is an over the view for you i won't read every item to you but i will hit some high points um as you all are probably aware already in our acps comprehensive plan it indicates that we'll implement a professional development plan aligned with our mission and vision and that meets our identified professional growth needs and this is an outline of the procedures that go along with meeting that need there are multiple steps involved in that and obviously

111the first step would be to identify our professional development needs in the division we do need to determine the needs and we do that by providing an annual survey to all stakeholders to get their interest in prevention professional development and what is needed throughout the course of the division those survey results are analyzed to identify school and division-wide priorities so we can provide pd both at the division level but also for site-based so principals have that information obviously to implement the professional development we offer in-person as well as virtual pd options for all schools annually those offerings are housed in a google classroom for staff access in addition to that we worked this past year and during this year to develop and maintain a division-wide bank of resources that can be shared for high quality

112evidence-based professional development a lot of our instructional staff have helped with the development of that process in essence that is also accumulating all the excellent pd that's provided in-house and providing it as kind of a a clearinghouse so that people can utilize that as necessary and and get also continuing education points for that that bank is available to all staff additionally uh we always provide annually professional development calendar that outlines additional professional development opportunities outside those offered here in amherst county public schools therefore people can take advantage of that as well we also provide professional development for our division leadership annually during the summer leadership conference and through the school year in principal and assistant principal meetings in order to do all this obviously we had to provide opportunities within the school calendar you just

113approved the 2022-2023 school calendar for the coming year one of the priorities is to identify opportunities within that calendar for professional development so that was one of the priorities we looked at the calendar committee did want to ensure that we had a sufficient number of days in this current calendar we have four division-wide professional development days identified in one site-based professional development day that's in addition to the different teacher work days that were requested as well as the breaks and other priorities just so that you know the annual professional development survey that will go out to all staff in may for the next year therefore we can gather information to help us plan for the coming school year in identifying our priorities and with that i'll take any questions that you might have award any

114questions um miss justice thank you mr gallagher thank you madam chairman um one question i have is in your survey what has been percentage-wise the response of our staff to the survey do we traditionally get like 40 60 10 percent i will have to look into that i can i can certainly get that information back to you if i gave you a percentage it would probably be a a little bit of guesswork so i can certainly i we do tend to get um we get solid response from those who are interested of course in any survey individuals who may not have a desire or a need aren't going to respond but i'll get i can get you certainly a a general average of percentages for those year to year okay i have another question these

115professional development days um do we require as a division do we require a certain number of professional development days or are these all optional well we don't require them per se we try to value them and place them as a priority in the calendar and then utilize those there may be some of those are built into the beginning of the year which is helpful uh if there are things that staff have indicated in the survey along with priorities that we know we need to prepare our teachers for for the coming school year in light of any changes that are on the horizon we use those days for that to prepare them appropriately and make sure we build in at least several opportunities throughout the course of the year to additionally um address that and then

116we plan and prepare our calendars for delivery last question oh no worries okay so in our in-house professional development as well as i think virtual is the vsba involved in that in any way um there have been concerns raised this evening regarding um bsba's whether they're partisan or not i just want to see are we using vsp are they providing any of our professional development there's no vsba involvement okay thank you board members any other questions all right thank you mr gallagher thank you um now we're moving on to um talk with um miss cabell and mr garrison so um peter would you like to start off or sienna either one um i'll go ahead and start hello it's good to be back after uh the last time we all saw each other a little

117emotional turmoil there it's okay we're moving on we're having a great old thursday so for me i have i've been talking to dr brown and he's okay with the idea of doing a game night like county-wide for like all the schools this came from the inspiration of amelon when i was in elementary school they had did a game night one night that i remember very vividly my mom and i went it was like six to eight they had little snacks drinks and like they put out a bunch of like board games and we just sat around there the entire night just having fun with different families and kids that i typically didn't talk to because you know you stayed with your grade and you went outside with your grade and you only hung around those

118friends that were your age i got to meet kids that were younger than me because they were older than me get to meet their parents their siblings like everybody so i think this in the spring is when we're planning to have it so a little less cover restrictions maybe a cookout some corn hole a little bit of music that's what we're hoping to plan for in the coming months thank you sounds very exciting peter is this working uh so over the last little bit i've recently started working with dr arnold and miss smith to work on expanding some support for stem and other extracurricular programs i noticed with my experience in robotics when i started the team a few years ago the big we had the materials but we didn't have the funding necessarily to

119do the registration which cost a surprising amount for middle school lego robots um and i'm hoping to be able to expand that a little bit more just so more clubs can take place uh nothing's cemented quite yet but we're gonna be working on that i do have a few upcoming events i feel like you guys should know about um there's uh the play amherst end this weekend i don't know if any of you guys are planning on going tomorrow but uh i hear it's pretty good uh and then a few nhs sponsored events including the easter egg hunt on april 9th the home show which any business can come and display their goods or anyone can on april 23rd you can get in contact with ms stinson or myself if you're interested in renting a

120booth for that and then there will be a 100 mile yard sale on may 7th which is a yard sale and once again and you can get in contact with me if you would like to get going with that or miss stinson once again yeah what wonderful news y'all are doing great things and thank you very very much for sharing those with us um dr arnold i believe we are going to move on and take a quick uh break for a short closed session okay i need a motion to go into closed session some move yeah i have a motion from mr greiser do i have a second second second from mr terry all in favor any opposed okay we are now in closed session [Music] do [Music] do [Music] hi i'm dr derek brown

121principal airman county high school why should you come work for amherst county public schools well i know people say that kids are great and kids are great everywhere but i am so serious when i say there's something different about these kids they're just amazing they're self-starting they they're inquisitive they are kind and caring they care about their community and there's just something different about our students that really makes amherst county special we are a great and loving community and we're a really tight knit community it's a small rural area and if you are really looking to make a difference in the lives of some amazing kids amherst county public schools is a place for you [Music] hi my name is derek adam i'm the principal of central elementary school so i choose amherst county public

122schools the reason for that is nine years ago i started my educational career here in amherst kind of public schools as a teacher also the netherlands complicated schools i became an assistant principal and a principal and the reason i say that is we take care of our own and we're also student centered so if that sounds like a team you want to be a part of please join our team my name is jay sells and i happen to be the proud foul principal of amelian elementary school we sit on the county's south side if you will wonderful wonderful things that go on in their county day in and day out but i would love to just say this if you don't hear me say anything else our school creed the theme is just like family

123it's not just in their school but i truly feel like the greater ambush county really is a just like family feel [Music] hello everyone i am mrs kimberly scott proud principal of eagleton elementary school i come before you today just to talk about how wonderful and special amherst county public schools are to everyone i'm very proud to be a part of amherst county public schools i think from elementary to secondary every school is unique in a very special way and has something to offer everyone who comes with that being said we're all about every child every day i do believe that for those who choose to come to amherst county public schools you're led in a very special way and with that being said amherst county has all been all about developing relationships within the

124community as well as equally important other than student success supporting those incoming individuals who have been called to do teaching and all other support positions that go along with making a successful school day we are amherst county public schools and i encourage you to be led to come to us and help make a difference in the lives of our students [Music] [Applause] hi my name is kelly holmes and i'm principal at amherst middle school emerson county public schools is a great place for families and students we work very hard to build relationships and we put our students first again amherst county public schools is a great place to learn [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi i'm joey crawford and i am the principal at temperance elementary school in amherst county virginia why did i choose amherst county

125public schools quite frankly it's home and the support that you get from the top all the way down if you want to have great support from your central office administration and from your building level come to amherst county public schools and again let's help [Music] hi i'm leah gray and i'm the principal at minelson middle school one of the reasons i love working for amherst county public schools is because we are working to prepare our students to be future ready learners [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] hmm [Music] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] wow [Music] [Applause] from [Applause] [Music] um [Music] happy birthday to you happy birthday to you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Music] hmm [Music] bye [Applause] [Music] wow [Music] hmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] asleep

126[Music] hmm [Music] hello i'm dr william wells assistant superintendent of amherst county schools we'd like to welcome you today to our open house [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] created using powtoon [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello i'm rob arnold superintendent of amherst county public schools and today we're at river edge park here in madison heights just next to the james river and our seventh graders from amherst middle school are here today working on the annual james river association project and those students have access to canoeing in the river they're going to learn about the ecosystem they're going to learn about the watershed they're going to learn about pollution in the river and how to avoid that and how to keep a

127a healthy environment here but but really for us it is about what we want to do with our our children in amherst county we talk about making students life ready and we don't believe that students can be life ready by sitting in a classroom and reading textbooks and answering worksheets and coming up with definitions they need to take that information and they need to come out here and they actually need to get their hands on it they need it needs to be relevant they need to think critically about the things that they're learning and help solve problems like pollution in our rivers and and certain things like that and so that's why we're here today that's why we think this is so important that's why our relationship with the james river association is is so

128valuable because it gives kids relevance in their learning and they become life-ready students thank you [Music] [Applause] all right good afternoon we're here with the james river association at river's edge park and this is part of our noaa be wet grant in which we're working with our seventh grade students and so we have our seven three teachers here today and they're paddling across the river right now and we're going to do a macro invertebrate certainly a minute so we're teaching people how to use the kayaks then we're gonna do the macro invertebrate search and i also have a group working look at the macro and verbs learn about the river so here's part of our education for the james river and uh stay tuned [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

129do [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Applause] do oh you [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] a closed session from mr terry i need a second second a second from mr rossi um all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay motion carries um need to certify whereas the amherst county school board has convened a close meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the virginia information of freedom of information act and whereas 2.2-3712-d of the code of virginia requires a certification by the school board that such a closed meeting was conducted in conformity with virginia law now therefore be it resolved that the amherst county school board hereby certify that to the best of each member's knowledge one only public business matters lawfully exempted from

130obit meeting requirements by virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification applies and two only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered i need a motion to certify most certified i have a second uh first by mr greiser second by mrs liggin yes mr kerry yes yes okay thank you very much um where are we have a couple of budget calendar reminders that um two weeks from now on february 24th at six o'clock i will present the uh the budget the proposed superintendent's proposed budget the following week we will have a budget workshop here that starts i believe at nine nine o'clock and um then we'll have march 10th and march 17th march 10th is our regular meeting and

131march 17th is on the calendar in case because of course it's a long session and if things change dramatically after i've presented my budget and we've discussed them that if there are changes that need to happen you guys can do that at that 17th meeting and then of course i present the budget to the board of supervisors on the 22nd i just wanted to get those dates out there you do have a budget calendar as well but i wanted to to remind you of those things okay thank you um and i know that board we are looking at our motion that we had last meeting um mrs cecil can you read that motion that we have mr geisler asked her by the motion to reflect the optional use of that with a predetermined metric that

132allows the administration to react quickly and that if it would not be that it would not be implemented until february okay thank you so that motion passed so bored what is your pleasure madam chair um yes mr greiser i'd i'd like to uh make an amendment to that or amend that motion to remove the metrics requirement okay mr greiser has made a motion to amend the motion that's on the floor i need a second second a second by mr greiser no i mean no it's okay mr terry um so we have a motion on the floor to make an amendment can you just um speak to that please uh just that we would remove the metric requirement from the february 22nd start date for the mass optional policy okay is there anyone that wants to

133speak against that madam chair i would like to make a substitute motion that we revert back and just follow executive order number two by governor yonkin okay mrs byrd has made uh well i'm going to ask this of the parliamentarian is that an amendment to the motion by mr greiser the substitute so is that handled the same as with an amendment yes okay so mrs berg has made a motion for a substitute i need a second second okay um now i need to know if we want discussion ms berg would you like to speak to that i just believe it's time that we give governor yonkan the same due respect that we gave governor northam and we give parents back the parental rights okay thank you is there anyone who wants to speak against that

134[Applause] is there a board member that would like to speak against that motion madam chair we we set the february 22nd date i mean i think it's target that staff is shooting for uh to for whatever mitigation strategies gives us time to get that information out to parents about that i think that's already been set instead of just keep flip-flopping dates that's that'll be here for you know it um we've we've gotten out of the uh out of the surge and and it's that's a good day to come back from winter break so okay excuse me you need to remain quiet please um okay mr geiser thank you um anyone like to speak for mrs justice madam chair i'd like to speak for that as we have safety measures in place and as we have

135made allowances and are prepared to make allowances for those needing accommodations due to health reasons that we enact it immediately as we did governor northam's okay thank you miss justice um is there anyone wants to speak against um mr terry yes so um i'm not really for or against i just need to know can we make it happen or what do we have to have in place dr arnold well if mass become optional that's just what's going to happen and you know i think there would be questions about do we have to ask to have the parents that want their kids to remain in mask what's the what's the procedure with that i mean i think we can we can get that done in the next couple of days for sure but i think what

136we were looking at was the um test to stay option and we're we're waiting for the materials to arrive which we know will come next week can we would have them next week yeah okay or at least marie yeah the end of next week okay so when do we discuss that well i think i think we just decide whether you wanna look whatever you decide we're gonna do gotcha right and if you tell us immediately we will make it happen gotcha okay any more just um madam chair the um mask mandate to lift that today and part of the mitigation would be to contact trey still is that something that we would continue to do to amend that contact race what if we just use it as a notification as a courtesy to the parents

137if their child may have been exposed that they'd be notified and that's it is something that seems different than quantity right exactly that's what i'm talking about if we use the contact tracing just to notify and we don't take any metrics or anything involved in that just to notify the parents that their child may have possibly been exposed as a courtesy hey look jenny was in class with well we have the moral responsibility to do that right exactly exactly i just what they're right exactly so that the parents that are a little uneasy about coming out of mass would know that they would be notified i don't think that's the question would be more about quarantining right quarantine only if they have symptoms no that's that's that's gonna have to be decided once y'all once

138y'all decide about the mask then we gotta decide about something else okay yeah do it one at a time i agree with dr arnold we need to talk about the motion that's on the floor and i know there's a lot of other decisions and conversations that we need to have but let's just um continue to talk about the motion that mrs berg has put forth um miss legging do you have any no comment um okay everybody he's trying to adjust to the emotions right now yeah okay i mean first there was something and then mr greiser then just like i'm just listening do you want us to clarify what the motion i know we're working on a substitute substitute motion what's what uh miss berg would you like to repeat that please do i heard

139her as well well miss burns was the substitute that we're discussing at the moment okay that's what's unfold yeah that's what's on the floor yes okay all right everyone's had a chance to speak mrs justice do you want to speak again yes ma'am madam chairman so couldn't we um treat the note um as far as parents that are wanting their kids to wear a mask can't we treat it the same way we treat my kid can't have nuts or my kid can't participate in this class event if they send a note um then the teachers do what they usually do which is johnny your mom wants you to have the mask on let's try and do that she loves you um it would seem to me that that is a standard procedure you're going to

140ask our staff to police that no no but if no mrs justice mrs justice can you direct your comments to the board to the chair please no okay question says miss justice that if you ask a if you're if you say we need a parent to give to say you you and you should be wearing masks are you saying that our staff need to make sure that they're wearing their mask at all time no i'm not madam chairwoman it would appear that the same consistency that we've applied in the past to um unique situations with our students could be applied in this situation okay thank you anyone else have any comments yeah we can't have the teachers keeping track need to direct your attention your comments to me please excuse me yes um madam chair

141when it comes to teachers being able to say your mother has has said you must wear a mask we can't put that on our teachers if the parent tells the if the parent tells the child they have to wear their mask that's up to the parent and the child you need to vote on them now if it was a if it's still a a mandate then the teacher has the right to say you still have the mask going okay thank you excuse me please be quiet we've had public comment and now we're trying to discuss thank you i move to close the question okay if we move to close the question um that means vote doesn't it it does second and it needs a second and i think we've pretty much ended the discussion anyway

142so we've got a second so all in favor of closing discussion say aye aye any opposed okay then we need to um call for the vote for mrs berg mr cecil can you repeat what hurts okay thank you um so all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed no no okay um the board votes no okay is there any other pleasure of the board so you can have the original motion called okay we have the original motion that's on the floor um mrs uh cecil can you repeat that please madam chair we can't hear her okay i'm sorry without a predetermined metric to be implemented that would not be implemented until february 22nd 2022 to allow to provide the staff time to acquire equipment and any other mitigation strategies needed to be implemented okay

143that's the motion on the floor so um did we get a second on that the original bye mr terry yes thank you thank you okay so now we have it open for discussion uh mr greiser you can start us off please no i think i think we it's the spirit of compromise we're getting rid of the metric i think that was some of the concern of the parents that want to get their kids out of mass so once we hit that february 22nd crossing start line that's that's what's going to happen so i think it's in the spirit of compromise so okay mr geiser thank you is there anyone that would like to speak against madam chair mrs berg i say we get back into the spirit of giving our parents back their rights [Applause]

144is there anyone wants to speak for i think you're done yeah madam chair call the question um move to call a question okay to call the question do i need you need a second second all right i have a second yep all in favor any opposed no no no no sorry okay board votes no so we will continue discussion okay so we have um mr greiser we've heard um from him is there and mrs berg is there anyone that wants to speak for for for the motion for mr geiser's the motion that's on the floor that's correct is there anyone that wants to speak against okay it looks as if um discussion has ended and i believe that the board can the board chair can close discussion without a vote at this point okay so

145we will call for the question um so all in favor say aye aye all opposed no say no madam chair are we voting on closing the question no we're voting on the question okay so let's we will we'll do that again so we'll make sure everyone's clear okay no discussion continued we voted to not close discussion allowed it to stay open no one else had anything excuse me miss burke i've got the floor we had a motion on the floor to call the question but we did no one had any more discussion so we moved on to call the question that mr grizer has put forth so for clarity's sake mrs cecil would you read it to us again the motion yes please uh [Music] the motion was to reflect the optional use of mask

146without a predetentment metric that would not be implemented until february 22nd 2022 to provide staff time to acquire equipment and any other mitigation strategies needed to be implemented the motion was seconded by mr terry okay okay so we have the motion on the floor and we will vote all in favor say aye aye all opposed no no okay chair votes aye motion carries um so i know that there is some other conversation that the board wants to have with dr arnold can you please share with us what you need us to help you with in order to implement this and within a week right we are where we need yeah so if mass come off like mr rossi said they're going to be a lot of difficulties in things like determining quarantining those kinds of

147things because all of those things are still in our plan which we're required to have a plan a health plan and so you know if if we have lots of students now not wearing masks one of the one of the things that we use to determine close contact and quarantining and those kinds of things were masked and now if if those are gone then that's gonna just create more more work trying to figure out who was considered it's going to be a lot more work on staff to try to figure out who is a close contact and who is not and then to determine whether quarantines are going to happen and so we just need clarification as to what you would like for us to do moving forward we feel like it's necessary as you

148said to make sure parents know when their child has been a close contact so board would it be your pleasure to maybe talk about contact tracing or quarantining do you have one order or the other or do you just prefer to ask some questions or make some comments how you're feeling of chair yes mr arasi the current order what decides with mass what decides what students are quarantined and tracing how does that exactly work proximity it's up all right so we've asked miss patron okay to answer these questions so um any student who is within three feet of a student who tests positive is considered a close contact when they have a mask on if the mask is off we have to expand that bubble to six feet so what this means in mostly in

149our secondary schools it's problematic because we're looking at up to eight classes for each child and where we would have been putting out maybe 10 or 12 kids as a close contact we would probably be bumping that up to double that to like 24 kids each case so if you get a positive test result you would quarantine 24 students approximately i'm just you know using general numbers but yes and that's just in the classroom that doesn't account for the the passing in the halls or no we that wouldn't be 15 minutes of time so this has to be okay so it's a time based time base so according to the cdc certain mass have different timelines from what we were presented at the last meeting is that correct not the masts no it's just that

150if you don't have your mask on we have to expand that bubble to six speeds no i understand that but the quality of the mass makes a difference in the exposure time no that's not in the guidelines i i do know what you're talking about that's been press releases in science i understand but that's not what's put into the guidelines that we actually follow from the cdc and vdh right so you're saying if we continue to do this tracing without mass there's going to be it increases yes of context right madam chair miss justice let me ask a question um so in an effort to alleviate the pressure on staff if we drop the quarantine to only students who are symptomatic so they don't test unless they're symptomatic and then they go home then that

151would wouldn't that eliminate contact tracing if we just kept it simple it's just kids who are sick who test positive yes that would eliminate contact tracing okay and okay and so that would theoretically release some of the burden on our um our staff and teachers is is a time for discussion that's what we're doing okay that's what we're doing okay we're trying to ask questions so we can try to give some guidance okay so when we compare um let's say tennessee to virginia so tennessee is approximately the same as far as population um same geographic area relatively if you look at the covet occurrences per day tennessee which in general is not mass mandate it has vaccine rate of 60 of one dose just one dose versus virginia that has a vaccine rate of one

152dose of 83 percent and in general mask mandates if you compare those two um according to ystat a year ago comparing tennessee's rates of averages per day a year ago they are actually lower by 40 now but if you compare virginia's rates of averages per day it's gone up 328 so that would indicate to me that possibly we may see a reduction possibly all this is possibly in transmission which hopefully will again make things a little healthier in the school system um so to me that's one thing to consider and then if you look at bedford and campbell who they went mask free um like two weeks ago i think pretty much when the order was made there hasn't been a surge so that to me would be some data that we could look at

153may i ask you um just briefly um i know we were talking about quarantining and contact tracing do you have any comments on that it would seem to me that doubted wouldn't indicate that that is necessary to keep kids safe okay thank you anyone else mr krazer dr arnold um i know the governor sent uh some directive to the state superintendent of education to work with vdx to send out some guidelines what were do you do you know offhand what those strategies were that the the governor recommended or the states they have the same go ahead yeah they still continue to recommend contact tracing quarantining for five days followed by days six to ten being strict mask wearing they recommend test to stay as an alternative to quarantining so that students would test every day

154before coming to school and as long as they remain negative they would be able to attend school they also recommend continued um distancing and ventilation from the governor's office you know from my understanding test to stay is voluntary correct it is voluntary yes if if a parent opted out of test to stay they would have to keep their child home for the quarantine period madam chad do i do think we need to look at our quarantine numbers because that is concerning i mean this does a parent that's had to stay home with their child i do i want to keep them in school i was excited when i saw the governor's test to stay proposal and that he's given us the equipment to do that so just food for thought i i'm just kind of

155following what the governor said right um that that that um we uh pick and choose but um i think that's a good strategy okay thank you miss lincoln no comment uh mr terry i would also like to hear some more about the possibility to intestine stay the parents have the choice to opt in and out opt out of that that can keep ninety percent of our kids back in school um keep the ones who have tested positive and we've shown it's a ten percent rate um in the classes when they've been exposed to someone maybe we can isolate those 10 percent and get the rest of them back in would you like for mr turn to speak to the can we have that by the 22nd in place by the 22nd yeah um we met

156with uh the department of education earlier this week and they said that they could have it shipped to us by late next week so we could have it in place so what happens is they ship us um each school would get cases of take-home tests and just to give you some information about how that works it's like an at-home test by next now and it has a qr code on it so the parent would have to scan the qr code and they're proctored through the test taking process and then they get an email saying whether their child was positive or negative based off of the proctoring they would have to forward that email to us for their child to be able to attend school if it's a negative test madam chair yes sir mr rossi

157uh the test that we're gonna be issued if we go this route what type of test is it it's a buy next now is the brand it's just like the test you can buy in cvs so it's a china test i'm not sure where it's manufactured honestly you can't find it um excuse me i'm hearing a lot of comments in the public and we have had a public comment and we've heard everything you've had to say we are trying to work through the best we can we are imperfect human beings trying to make a very difficult decision for all of our children so i would appreciate a little bit of cooperation so that we can hear one another and we can focus on what the solutions might be we have a school system to run

158we also have um well if if we cannot remain respectful i'm gonna ask you to leave okay um so i know some of us have talked about test to stay and you you were telling us about the um kits that we would be getting can you walk us through one more time what that would look like for our parents and our students yes ma'am so we would have to continue to contact trace the close contacts we would then notify those parents that their child was a close contact and provide them with the tests for the length of time that they would have been out of school which would have been five days up to five days it depends on when in the process we're notified by the original positive so sometimes it's only a day

159or two but it could be up to five days and then the parent would have to test their child each morning before sending them to school using the proctor test and then forward the email that says that their child is negative to us okay and then if it's negative they can return right yes they can continue to attend as long as their test is negative okay and i know currently we have if they stay home five days quarantine they come back the second five with a mask yes okay so under this with the um test to stay if they come back um the last second week then they're still under mask optional yes ma'am they continue to recommend that they wear a mask when they come back okay so the mask is recommended because they've

160been exposed but it's not something that would change what we've decided tonight yes okay madam chairwoman i move to eliminate quarantine okay i have a um to eliminate quarantine do i have a second i have a second from mr o'rossi so we need to open up the floor for discussion on quarantine mrs justice you brought that to the floor so would you like to re just repeat it and then statewide or whatever you want to share with us i moved to eliminate quarantine okay unless someone is sick symptomatic well no okay i move to eliminate cortisone floors to eliminate quarantine so do you have anything you wanted to share with us about that no i think you've already heard it but i just think so this justice has made the motion she doesn't have any

161additional comments do i have anybody that wants to speak against removing quarantine yeah i don't know how we got to that question yet i mean i don't know how we got to we went we're trying to talk about contact tracing so you want to remove quarantine on the basis of what it's emotion no i mean yeah so what are we talking about here with your second you want a second no that's what you said discussion it's been seconded we're in discussion okay so i asked if anyone wanted to speak against removing quarantine well i need an understanding of it okay you're saying who you want who do you not want pointing well i think at this point there's no clarification it's just removed madam chair mrs berg um on miss justice motion i would just

162like to state that the quarantine has been so detrimental to our children and their education and their learning standards keep dropping and dropping these kids are struggling we need to keep them in school we can't keep quarantine these kids and sending them home every other day thank you anyone else i agree with that oh mrs lincoln just so everybody won't throw thoughts i was not disagreeing with but i was trying to get don't quarantine anyone or you're saying what we have been doing is justice i'm saying that we quarantined 4262 students by january 13th with only 489 covet positive tests that meant that we sent home 3773 students who missed more than five days of school who were not sick so it would seem that quarantining is actually harming a majority of the students opportunity

163to educate okay that was the clarification but aren't we trying to deal with that through test i mean did we just have a conversation of another method of this didn't we there there is another method yeah and so that's why i didn't understand the coalition here okay so do you have any more questions okay anyone else no i think you know mr terry i i agree um madam chair that we can get away from quarantine but i believe we have to do it by other means and and test to stay is how i would get there okay um anyone else madam chair mr arasi the test to stay option if we eliminate quarantining the test to stay would be obsolete i guess if if they're not being quarantined they wouldn't be going home so they

164wouldn't have to test to stay because they would already be there however if a child has symptoms and not forcing a quarantine be the wrong answer but that child should have an opportunity to test to stay if they have symptoms i'm not for testing children that have no symptoms i'm saying if it's in the school they've been exposed they're not feeling well they go to the nurse the nurse gives the test if they show positive then they go home and quarantine i don't want to say that eliminating quarantine is the right answer i'm not saying that testing children that are not sick is the right answer i'm trying to make common sense kind of rule here if your child is sick your child stays home um i know school history shows that if you're sick

165and you go to the nurse you have a fever the parents get called you come pick up your child that's usually how it works and if a child is sick before he goes to school responsible parents usually leave them home they don't go to school so the five-day quarantine option where if they opt out of being tested if they show symptoms is up to the parent the parent can decide whether or not to test the stay or not test to stay based on the symptoms if they're sick they go to the nurse's office they can get tested if they test positive they have to quarantine we can't take that ability away from the school to quarantine a sick child we can protect the others with the test if they're sick we can't just throw everything

166out and let parents continue to make their decisions without protecting other students and i think that's the compromise that we that this board needs to come to an understanding that sometimes parents miss you know i get up very early in the morning i'm not there when my daughter goes to school so i might miss it she's not feeling well that morning she gets to school she doesn't feel well she goes to the nurse's office she gets a test she tests positive i leave work i pick her up bring her home but i don't want to have to stay home for five days and miss work or be late for work pay child care when my child is not sick and force her to take a test when she's not sick to go to school it

167doesn't make any sense that's it thank you [Applause] um any other comments or questions madam chair um mr terry so and my reasoning for test to stay is i have had a child who was asymptomatic tested positive would not have known he was sick unless he was tested that being the case he would have been there at school exposing kids to the same virus that he had kids who may or may not have been been able to fight it like he could so with that being said the not showing symptoms he did not show symptoms but he was positive and tested twice so thank you mr terry um is there anyone else okay then we will call for the question if there's no other all in favor oh let's repeat the motion mrs cecil justice

168made a motion to eliminate quarantine it was seconded by mr arasi okay to just eliminate quarantine okay all in favor say aye aye all opposed no um i'm going to ask for a show of hands all in favor all opposed okay board votes no um okay is there any other um discussion you want to have about quarantine any other motions you want to make about quarantine madam chair i think we need to give him some kind of guidance so i i just i'll make a motion that we implement um test to stay in addition to uh the other recommended vdh guidelines okay so test can you is that a motion or is well let this let me separate it like this madam chair i'm moved that we implement a test to stay program okay i

169have a motion on the floor to implement a test to stay program is that right ms cecil okay thank you do i have a second second a second from mr terry um we'll open the floor for discussion uh mr greiser well i think this is a step towards getting rid of some of those kids that are sitting at home we have already talked about we want to get them back in the classroom so okay thank you anybody want to speak against mrs justice i guess the big question i have is um when do we stop because covet is going to be here that's what they've said it's going to be here so if we're doing test to stay in quarantining they go together then when did when does that stop do we set do we

170set a date do we say okay effective april 30th we sunset this provision you know if we're going to do something like that i think we need to have a an end date that we stand by all right thank you is there anybody that wants to speak for test to stay outspoken okay any other discussion um may i ask for clarity with test to stay can you go over with me what the quarantine requirements would be if i am a student and someone in my class has coveted yes ma'am so we would contact trace that classroom and the students who are considered close contacts they would be given the test for the duration of the quarantine period which is five days from the last date of exposure so if we're notified two days in they

171may only receive three tests for the three days if we're notified on the first day they may receive all five tests and then when they if they continue to test negative when they return to school we're supposed to still have the strict masking according to the the way the program works i do want to clarify one thing that was mentioned earlier to be a part of the program and receive the free tests we have to follow their rules so we wouldn't be able to do it just for sick kids we would have to do it for the quarantined kids excuse me come on guys can we listen please okay i want you to explain that one to me again yes ma'am so the the tests are paid for by the department of education through a

172grant that they have so there are rules that come along with it and the rules are that we have to use it for kids who are quarantined as close contacts we can still provide tests to students who have um symptoms but we couldn't use it for just that and access this pool of tests we have to do the whole program we can't just pick and choose parts of the program so if explain again what that means if i am exposed to covet in my classroom what does that mean for me and my classmates the those who are the close contacts would be given tests to take home and their parents would administer the tests that are proctored via the internet and as you continue to test negative you can continue to come to school during

173those first five days yes okay and if you were not a close contact you would not need to do anything you would not have to do anything so explain to me when you say follow the rules what those rules are that it's for everyone who's considered a close contact so we couldn't just like mr rossi had brought up earlier about um only testing students who had symptoms sending them to the nurse and having them tested we could not use this program for that purpose we have to do it for the close contacts so if you have a closed contact then we would offer the test to stay yes if the parent wanted the child to continue to stay in education and and that week they would get this test to stay to implement at a

174home yes as long as it's negative they can come back yes okay if the parent did not want to do tests to stay they would continue with the quarantine for that and they would stay home for five days yes okay okay um lord i will try to remember where we were because i was engaging here mrs cecil but we have mr geiser made a motion to implement a test to stay program it was seconded by mr tara you've had discussion you asked for clarification okay um mrs justice i believe we're still in the discussion but i'm chairman correct okay so um with an unmasked population close contact is considered six feet i believe for more for more than 15 minutes or at least 15. for 15 minutes or more yes for 15 minutes or more

175and miss patron i believe earlier said that with an unmasked population we're going to have sounded like twice as many in our secondary schools it will likely be twice as mobile yeah so we're looking at about double the number of quote exposed students and in order for them to come to school they have to participate in a medical procedure which would be the testing and if they're not comfortable with that then they would have to stay out because i believe that's what testis day would look like in these circumstances is that correct okay thank you madam chair um i had a question um didn't even the department or the virginia department of health and contact tracing and everything why are we continuing to do all this that's this is your decision it's not you asking

176me why we're doing all this this is your decision so i don't know that a question to the chair is appropriate at that time you can make your comment and how you feel about it certainly we're not even following anybody's guidelines this is ridiculous i move to amend the motion this is justice to set a time limit of april 15th that's two weeks after spring break um and at that point okay that's my motion i move to amend mr greizer's motion to set a time limit of the test to stay for april 15th okay we have a motion on the floor do i have a second second i have a second from mrs berg now we'll open up the floor for discussion manager um one moment mrs justice did you want to speak to that

177first certainly um i believe it might be a good compromise in that it is serving those that want to do test estate but it still honors the concern that this will go on and on and it also allows for some time after spring break if people are concerned about a spike okay thank you um mister um excuse me mr gallagher is it okay if i clarify that that's actually the last day of spring break i don't know if it matters to the proposal but it's not after spring break yeah that's actually the final day it's friday of spring break is the 15th i mean i don't know if that's relevant to your proposal i just want to make sure you're understood all right thank you uh mr chrysler i was going to i have no

178problems with some kind of end date i think i don't want it to seem like this is going to be a perpetual thing i think that if you're kind of following like that 1303 piece that maybe through the end of the school year to carry us through excuse me a moment board we have um someone that has the floor i'm sorry i was just asking calendar questions okay mr geiser could you please uh repeat that again so i definitely think it's reasonable to put a date out there i would recommend carrying us through the end of the school year but i definitely i don't want to make it seem like a perpetual this is going to roll into next year either without some further discussion on that okay thank you anyone else that wants to

179speak um or ask questions uh mr terry so the you know setting an april 15th date on it gives us time to see what it's going to do gives us time to we can it can be reevaluated at that time and if it's can be removed it can be removed that's okay i believe the motion on the floor is to end it on the 15th so if it uh i guess i would have to if we ended on the 15th it would have to be another motion to revisit it or consider that down the road or an amendment at this time so just to consider those things so at the moment we have the motion on the floor to just end it on the 15th and and do you want to have any other comments

180before we move on unlocked a question i think i can move to question move to question all right mrs justice has called for the question i need a second for that okay i have a second from mr terry um all in favor for moving to the question say aye aye aye any opposed okay no oppose we'll move to the question so um we have our motion as the cecil just made a motion to amend the original motion to set a time limit of test to stay program for april 15th 2022 it was seconded by missburg okay all in favor say aye all opposed okay motion carries um board do you want to have any other discussions at this time dr arnold do you need anything from us at this time no we can do that

181thank you okay thank you board uh dr arnold i know that there was one more thing on your agenda about our board norms and where we need to go with yeah so madam chair in march of 2020 the board uh developed norms and protocols for how board members were to uh conduct their responsibilities in communication with each other with myself we tried last year to have that meeting again and developed those and we were unable to schedule that due to conflicts from the board we have set march 3rd which is also our budget retreat to bring them back to do the governance and norms training what i would like to offer as i am not going to be here at the end of this upcoming year is that these norms should really with the new

182board be developed with the new person in mind and so what i would like to suggest to you guys is that we as a group because there are a couple new members that haven't committed to these norms to do so tonight then we can forego the march 3rd development of new norms and then you wait until july august to develop them with a new superintendent if y'all would be amenable to that and they are attached to your board docs um i know um board dr arnold had asked me about the norms because we had planned to come together with him and to work on these so that we would all be on the same page on how we operate and i think that's extremely important and if we go and work on these norms and

183we come up with new ones then in the fall we'll have a new superintendent and we may want to develop new ones so the recommendation i believe is that we stick with our current ones so that we don't have to meet twice and do all of that work two times but i wanted it to be the board's pleasure because if we don't meet now and develop new norms i want a unanimous decision that we as board members will follow our current norms does that make sense so if we all are in agreement that these norms we can abide by until we have a new superintendent and we develop new ones then we can skip that meeting if not we need to do it twice any questions that you have for dr arnold or for myself

184meadow chairman when i was looking at our board docs it appeared that the norms and governance was like five pages long but when i looked at our board um our policies it's only one page so i'm confused which is it the norms that you have on board docs is what this board agreed upon in march of 2020. okay the previous board worked with dr arnold and came up with these and if you're not good with that we can come up with new ones and when did you say we were scheduled to meet it's march the 3rd march the 3rd which is the also the same day that y'all will be here for the budget budget retreat so it'll just make it a longer day do we need to make this decision tonight or can the

185board make that can they review these and make the decision at our meeting on the 24th will that give us enough time to adjust it's really close together yeah no it may not do do you have any questions about it i mean are miss jessica i mean i gave these to you guys in december so i'm assuming i would appreciate i if we can move it to the 24th and that allows enough time to implement it it would be good as a board to discuss it that way at least have a better understanding of what we're voting on does that make sense for us newbies so you would rather go ahead and just meet and develop new norms i think what i'm saying is i would rather vote on it not tonight but on the

18624th can we do that um well we can it's very very tight as far as our commitment to meeting um it's fun and we can do that okay um is the board um okay with us postponing this until the 24th yes ma'am mr russell are you okay well i we're going to be writing a new one with the new administration right yes sir and this is what we've been working with since we started back in december nothing has really changed the order of things right right so this is how it's been since dr arnold was started is that is that it's only been i mean we've had since last year yeah 2020. it gets reviewed every two years every year as as boards turn over okay all right so i guess i i see no

187reason why we can't go with what we have now until we get our new administration in okay well i believe the consensus that most of the board was fine with waiting until the 24th dr arnold you said that that would be doable for us so um i will encourage you to make sure you look over those because if you agree to those on the 24th we need to stick to them and if if you're not agreeable to them we just need to work on some new ones okay thank you thank you anything else dr arnold no ma'am okay um we are at committee reports from school board members um miss liggin uh only thing i have is i did have a loyal board meeting a couple weeks ago we did it virtually and we're holding

188off on some things because we're waiting on a report of the condition of what's going to be for the future of the regional program but other than that things are well and long just reporter okay good thank you um mr greiser governor's school yeah uh we didn't we weren't able to meet in february we were scheduled to meet in march okay thank you um and mr terry stem we have not met this this month okay thank you um items from individual board members um mr orazi thank you madam chair um i'd like to uh first thank all the parents for coming out tonight and uh staying these long hours um your voices are heard we are we are listening and we're gonna get through it looks like we got about two weeks i mean that's

189just just facts the children is the concern of this board and to every parent out there and their education is why we're all here um elections will come and go children will always be here still be a number one concern i encourage all of you to get out and vote the the board has come to some really tough decisions these days uh i'm new to it so i'm trying to understand how everything works it's not easy up here believe me a lot of emails and and it's good to see the parents participate because if it wasn't for the parents we wouldn't have a school we wouldn't have the kids none of this would happen but remember we're all in it together we we're not going to move forward if we're going to constantly go back

190and forth on a topic that's it's going to fade away it's going to be over soon you know we've made the right choices in the elections things are going to turn around so please stay engaged ask questions please thank you okay thank you madam chair thank you so much for your hard work dr arnold miss patron our lawyer all of you parents thank you so much for coming i heard a comedian once he said he said my favorite phrase is this too will pass you're young don't worry it'll pass you're sick it'll pass um this will pass covet will be a season and in this season we need to bear with one another in love we're doing our best with um the votes and everyone wants to do what's right it's a matter of how

191that's accomplished but please be patient it will and tell your kids it's gonna end and we'll keep working hard thank you for communicating thanks so much for coming here keep coming not not just when you're upset keep coming because this is interesting stuff not always maybe but it's important and you got to be engaged to know what's going on mrs burke yes i just want to thank everybody for coming out tonight some of us heard what you had to say i wish all of us would have listened and implemented it but hopefully next time we'll get some changes thank you oh mr greiser i want to thank um or congratulate again miss mentor miss reicher that was a astounding achievement that's always good to see our teachers recognized like that um and mr cargill i

192always champion he does great stuff not just filming this every week but all his work with the games and things the stem real world design that's the kind of stuff that i got on the board unfortunately we're navigating all this but to see the stem the cte programs and things excel the opportunities provided i'm happy with the board of supervisors for supporting the opportunity to expand the facilities at the high school which would also include some cte uh programs for kids for things that they've identified that they want to be when they grow up and we got to provide them the space and ability to teach them uh the skills to do that um thank you to the staff that's compiled these gifts and things like that for school board i say i've said it

193the last two years i it's not my i don't like receiving this kind of stuff but thank you for what you do to do that thank to our student reps uh for the information and stuff that they uh have provided us and the optimistic things that are going on at the high school ameristan there's some good kids in that play i've got my reservation saturday night i would encourage you to do the same uh support every program around here um and then i'll just end it at this i heard from enough people this week to know where my conscience lies and that just because it's the loudest voice in the room doesn't mean it's the only voice in the county so i know we are doing the best to compromise and i appreciate the work

194with this board and everybody even though we may differ on opinions we we will reach the agreement we're going to move this school board our school forward this division forward every child every day thank you miss chair thank you mrs lincoln i just want to thank all the schools for the nice gifts i've said it in the past that i'm appreciative for the love shown and i want to congratulate all of those tonight who miss cargill and the teachers of the year and all of the good things i want to thank the administration and staff for all your hard work for all ahead thank you mr chair i'd like to you know i think john stole a lot of the thunder with um the congratulations on the teachers and the uh students who won the

195uh real world design that was uh an awesome little thing they've got going on there um the uh read across the amherst careers i mean it was neat that you were able to get somebody graduated from amherst county schools for each of those each of those pages that's that's that's a pretty neat thing for the kids to get into and like we said about covid it is we're getting there i i know everybody came here tonight hoping that we would just wash it all clean um and you're right you know we need to take mask off so we're gonna take mask off come the 22nd which will allow us some time to get some things in place so i know that just all that did was make a mad on the other direction so as

196soon as we take off mask we'll hear from the other side of the county that wanted us to keep masks so not only will we have made people mad because we're going to do tests to stay but we're going to have the people who wanted to have mask all the time mad at us so i get used to it i get the emails same people same time so that's it thank you thank you mr terry i just want to say that tonight i have just been blown away by all of the wonderful things that we're doing in amherst county um you know the aaron mentor and mrs reichert and um being recognized and also you know if it's counseling week i just appreciate them i appreciate you bringing that to our attention because they do

197do a lot of work in this time of where we've been the last two years i know that their task of what they're dealing with has become very much challenging so they are greatly greatly appreciated so for all the counselors out there we say thank you very much um and then the real world challenge um gracie and jeremiah just was amazing totally amazing it just gives me such hope to know that the students and our schools are they're ready for tomorrow and we just want to continue getting every student ready and i know that with national cte month and we're moving forward with our auditorium that we will be able to expand some of those opportunities for cte so i'm very excited that we're able to provide some of these state-of-the-art things for our students

198the read across america was is i mean read across amherst cares i mean was a great presentation and a storybook and i think very innovative so we have a lot of good things going on so i want to just say thank you thank everyone from the schools that have given us these gifts doing what we do sometimes it can be very difficult because you're always going to make someone unhappy so you could say it's a thankless job but when i have schools that are sitting here saying thank you it does warm your heart and i want to remind everyone that next week i believe is virginia kindness week so i look forward to all the ways that we can find to be kind to one another i also want to thank all of the parents

199that have come those that have expressed via email given us lots of data to look at things that research documents those are very helpful and we do appreciate those we have difficult decisions to make we have to navigate the waters for all of our students and we're trying to do that the best we can we are in agreement that the parents need to have those choices we're just trying to make sure that we can get our school system where we need to be and we remain operational so i just appreciate board for your work tonight i know it was challenging but i really do appreciate each and every one of you so thank you and thank you dr arnold um frank wright i appreciate you being here miss cecil thank you so much and staff

200thank you very much i know that we have another closed session that we need to go in with dr arnold pursuant to section 2.2-3711a of the code of virginia it is recommended the board convenient closed meeting for the following a one personnel matter and a two student matter religious exemption okay board i need a motion to go into closed session some move i have a motion to go into closed session for mr greiser i need a second second from mrs legging all in favor say aye any opposed okay we're now on closed session [Music] you